Judge Engoron shoots down ‘nonsensical’ arguments and ‘disingenuous’ and ‘bad faith’ statements
The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil trial for fraud allegations has rejected a motion from the former president’s attorneys for a mistrial.
A filing from attorneys for Mr Trump and his co-defendants argued that the case was “tainted” with “tangible and overwhelming” evidence of “apparent and actual bias” from Judge Arthur Engoron and his chief clerk, who has been the subject of ongoing attacks from Mr Trump and his allies, which prompted the judge to issue a gag order in the case that prevented parties from disparaging court staff.
In his order on Friday, Judge Engoron shot down “nonsensical” legal arguments from Mr Trump’s legal team involving his clerk, and underscored his “unfettered right” to consult with his law clerks throughout the course of a trial.
Banks/lenders mostly.
Both the banks AND the people of New York.
He would over inflate the value of the properties in order to take out massive loans using the properties as collateral. So when it came to financing, his properties were cited as being extremely valuable. These lies defrauded the banks and lenders.
Then when it came time to pay taxes on the properties, he would massively deflate the values so he paid a fraction of the taxes on them. These lies defrauded the people of New York State as the beneficiaries of state taxation.
That’s who he defrauded (in this particular lawsuit.)
And to extend this point, submitting false statements of financial condition is fraud against the People of the State of New York, with disregard as to whether anyone lost money.
Yep, and to add to that, his legal team has already tried the, “But there were no victims, bro,” line of arguments. Unsurprisingly, the judge was not convinced. You don’t get to commit fraud just because everybody was enriched at the end of it.
I wonder if upon him losing this case, if any banks will sue for damages? They would have all the evidence already laid out for them, seems like an easy pay day for the shareholders.
Didn’t the defense say they were going to put bankers on the stand who were going to say “No, we didn’t care, it’s all good”? I don’t recall hearing from any of those bankers at all this week.
Yeah, I didn’t see anything about any banks testifying. I can’t image a bank that would get a representative on the stand to basically say, “he cheated us out of possibly millions, but that’s fine”, while at the same time foreclosing on someones home because they offered them a predator mortgage loan to make a few thousand extra (depending how long the homeowner took to go under water).
The biggest damage for Trump is that he will never be able to do it again. No banker in the world will accept him or anyone close to him telling them “it’s a 15-storey building” without sending someone over and counting the stairs, they will even start counting the holes on Trump’s golf courses. This means that he will no longer be able to get cheap loans or cheat on his taxes.
The banks may stay put, because otherwise their shareholders might ask why they did not get someone to count the floors in the first place, instead of believing a notorious liar. They will probably take the smaller losses and hope that Trump is still willing /stays capable to pay back some of the loans.
The biggest damage for Trump might be even larger than that. Trump likely will lose control of the Trump organization. In addition, he could face hundreds of millions in fines. Despite claiming that he’s a billionaire, this will hit him extremely hard financially - the very place where his ego is situated.
But even more than this, I read reports that the Trump name might be tied to the Trump Organization. So if he loses control of this company, he might lose control of the Trump name. It could be sold off to some other buyer who could launch a series of “Trump” products that have nothing to do with Donald J Trump.
If this happens, I wouldn’t want to be a ketchup bottle in Mar-A-Lago!